1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a projector, more specifically, relates to a projector having a mechanism for adjusting attitude thereof.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, a projector has been used for presentation in a conference, academic seminar, exhibition etc. The projector modulates a light beam irradiated by a light source in accordance with image information to form an optical image, and projects the optical image on a screen etc. in an enlarged manner.
Recently, projectors have come to be used in a wider area such as presentations in office meetings and on business trips. Further, projectors are now used in technical review sessions in research and development sections by fetching and projecting CAD/CAM/CAE data, in various seminars and workshops, and in school classrooms during audio-visual education. Further, projectors are used for reviewing remedy and medical guidance by projecting medical images and data such as CT scans and MRIs, and for effectively staging exhibitions and events attracting a lot of people.
Since projectors are currently used in such a variety of environments, setup attitude and positional relationship against the screen for the optical image to be projected in an enlarged manner differ in accordance with the environment where the projector is used.
Accordingly, in order to facilitate to see the optical image projected by the projector on the screen, the attitude of the projector relative to the screen has to be appropriately adjusted according to each environment.
In order to conduct attitude adjustment, it is known to provide an attitude adjusting mechanism for adjusting the attitude of the projector to the projector.
One of the attitude adjusting mechanism adjust the attitude of the projector by adjusting a height position on the front side of the projector relative to the back side thereof.
Specifically, the attitude adjusting mechanism is provided at the front center of the projector and has a foot member adapted to advance and retract relative to the projector (an exterior case thereof) and a manipulation button for releasing fixing the advancement and retraction position of the foot member, the manipulation button being provided at the center of the front side of the projector being adjacent to the foot member.
In such arrangement, the user initially lifts the front side of the projector by grabbing one corner on the front side of the projector with one hand. Subsequently, the user presses the manipulation button with a finger while supporting the front center of the projector with the other hand and, keeping the condition, changes the inclination of the projector and releases the manipulation button at a desired position. Accordingly, the foot member is fixed at the desired advancement and retraction position relative to the projector, thereby enabling to adjust the attitude of the projector in front and back direction. Incidentally, the user ordinarily conducts such adjustment work while observing the optical image on the screen.
However, according to the above attitude adjusting mechanism, since the manipulation button is disposed at the front center of the projector, in order to adjust the attitude of the projector, the user has to support one of the corners on the front side of the projector with one hand and simultaneously support the center of the front side of the projector with the other hand, so that the other corner on the front side of the projector remains unsupported.
Accordingly, the projector is extremely unstably supported in adjusting the attitude thereof. Therefore, great inclination in right and left direction approximately orthogonal with the front and back direction is likely to be generated, so that the attitude adjustment work in front and back direction becomes difficult.